James Hawkins

In its early days in Victorian England croquet was a game for the wealthy but competition from other sports - most notably tennis - the onset of two world wars, and a century of social change forced the game to adapt. Modern croquet is an intricate game of strategy, played socially within clubs and competitively at national and international level. The object of the game - to guide two balls round a circuit of loops - has changed little over the years but tactically, croquet has become much more complex, elaborate and fascinating. Complete Croquet is a comprehensive guide for the aspiring and improving croquet player. It deals with the basic skills, and how to avoid and eradicate common problems, as well as providing an in-depth coverage of modern tactics. The author focuses on the building blocks of break play, examining in detail how each element works before bringing it all together. There is advice on how to repair a bad situation when everything has gone wrong, how to exploit a good situation when everything is going well, and how to regain the initiative when the opponent is storming ahead. Whether your interest is in developing an understanding of top-class, championship-level tactics, in improving your play at handicap level, or even in just playing at home and wanting to get a better understanding of the game, Complete Croquet will prove to be invaluable. Superbly illustrated with 195 colour photographs and diagrams.

A Guide to Skills, Tactics and Strategy

Complete Croquet

The seventh novel in the popular Inspector Bliss series is another action-packed mystery filled with nail-biting adventures involving religious sects, criminal conspiracies, and the world trade in cocoa. When an RCMP officer is murdered in Vancouver, suspicion falls upon Janet Thurgood, a woman in her sixties who appears to everyone, apart from Trina Button, to be completely mad. Trina is quick to embroil Daphne Lovelace in her efforts to discover the truth about Janet. David Bliss, meanwhile, tries to stay out of the way in the south of France, where he encounters problems of his own when, to his utter amazement, he rediscovers his one true love. Can he finally pull the trigger and make a commitment?

An Inspector Bliss Mystery

Crazy Lady

When the Queen decides to attend a mosque for Friday prayers, David Bliss is assigned to protect the royal couple.

Deadly Sin

Short-listed for the 2002 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel Detective Inspector David Bliss has been transferred from London, England, to Hampshire in what appears to his new subordinates and superiors as a move down the career ladder. His first day on the job begins with a murder: Jonathan Dauntsey, son of the Major, willingly confesses to murdering his father. It’s an open-and-shut case, until the investigation stalls when the police can’t find the body. D.I. Bliss follows a trail of clues that lead him back in time to the point where the central presumption of the case - a murdered father - comes into question. Who did Jonathan Dauntsey murder, if anyone at all? As the mystery of the murder begins to resolve itself, so does the mystery of Bliss’s transfer from the big city to a small town.

Missing: Presumed Dead

Melanie Gordonstone, a cherubic six-year-old, was Daddy’s favourite in every way. So Margaret, her jealous 12-year-old sister, drowned her in a backyard pool. Inexperience led young Detective Bliss to attribute the girl’s death to accident, but Melanie’s mother drives herself mad believing her husband to be the killer. Margaret taunts her deranged mother for 10 years before putting her out of her misery, hanging her from a chandelier in a faked suicide. Now, frightened for his own safety, Margaret’s father sends her to live in a remote Canadian community where he believes she can do no further damage - big mistake!

No Cherubs for Melanie

Bill Scott

A Retailer's Playbook for Beating Walmart

Retail is Detail

In this, his fifth escapade, Inspector David Bliss goes undercover once again, and heads to St. Juan sur Mer on the Côte d’Azur. His mission is so secret that even Bliss doesn’t know why he is there: he only knows that he is tracking down a man the force wants in custody for an unstated reason. But the winds of the Mediterranean provide clues that take Bliss off course and lead him to unravel two of the world’s best known unsolved mysteries: the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask and the location of the stolen Nazi gold.

The Dave Bliss Quintet

In The Fish Kisser, a megalomaniac becomes determined to exact revenge on the Western world through a devious plot of global cyber-warfare. He enlists his own agents to track down and kidnap the experts and educated elite that can help him accomplish the unthinkable. With a series of staged deaths and disappearances, he sets his plan in motion. When the hired henchmen target Roger LeClarc, an English computer expert with a dark secret of his own, the hunters become the hunted. English detective David Bliss, who chased and was chased around the English countryside in Missing: Presumed Dead, teams up with Dutch detective Yolanda Pieters to solve this improbable affair. Fighting internal politics, stumbling upon government cover-ups, and even battling Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, together they chase a trail of blood, intrigue, and romance across Europe to Iraq in a desperate search for the kidnapped specialists. Fans of the David Bliss character will not be disappointed as James Hawkins turns the action up several notches.

The Fish Kisser

Emotions run high when Queen Elizabeth II attempts to heal the schism between Christians and Muslims by attending a London mosque for Friday prayers. David Bliss, newly returned to duty while he tries to find a publisher for his novel, has the task of protecting the royal couple, but is caught off guard when an attack comes from an unexpected quarter. Meanwhile, Bliss’s aging friend Daphne Lovelace needs help. Her elderly neighbours have died and apparently left their house to the family from hell. While Bliss desperately tries to protect the queen, Daphne puts on her oldest coat and takes up residence in a seniors home as she tries to discover what really happened to her neighbours. Age apparently catches up with her, and in no time she appears as senile as the other inhabitants, but Trina Button in far-off Canada smells a rat and forces Bliss to take action. Is someone playing God? And what role does Jack the Ripper play?

A bizarre series of suicides by elderly women in England raises the eyebrow of newly promoted Chief Inspector David Bliss, who soon discovers that all the women had recently sent large sums of money to a Western Union account in Vancouver. As Bliss uncovers the truth behind the deaths, old friends Daphne Lovelace and Trina Button are on a road trip through North America, raising funds to help those in need of kidney transplants. But when their fabulous Kidneymobile is found unoccupied with no trace of them, a perplexed Bliss searches frantically for his friends, and the astonishing secret that links their disappearances with the suicides.

Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc.

This ebook bundle contains the first eight novels of the Inspector Bliss Mystery series by James Hawkins.

Inspector Bliss Mysteries 8-Book Bundle

In this, his fifth escapade, Inspector David Bliss goes undercover once again, and heads to St. Juan sur Mer on the Côtes d’Azur. His mission is so secret that even Bliss doesn’t know why he is there: he only knows that he is tracking down a man the force wants in custody for an unstated reason. But the winds of the Mediterranean provide clues that take Bliss off course and lead him to unravel two of the world’s best known unsolved mysteries: the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask and the location of the stolen Nazi gold.

James Hawkins

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